Solitaire (PC) review "Solitaire is a game. It's not merely a fun game. It's a game that has ruined families, brought down kings, corrupted popes, and more importantly, provided endless amounts of time for people to goof off at work and do nothing."

Solitaire is a game. It's not merely a fun game. It's a game that has ruined families, brought down kings, corrupted popes, and more importantly, provided endless amounts of time for people to goof off at work and do nothing. It is more than a game; it's a natural obsession, and several twelve step programs exist for it.

Solitaire is a card game, usually played with cards. In case you're reading this review in the year 3001, on the planet Hulyox of Beta Centuri, cards were an ancient Earth device used to alleviate boredom, commonly plastic. In Solitaire, cards were ''dealt'' (given to the layman) to the player, in a specific pattern. Seven stacks, first card up on the first stack, the rest down. On the next, second card up on the second stack, the rest down. Repeat until all seven stacks are down.

Now, the tricky part. The object is to get all of your cards from the playing area (the seven stacks) to the original suits. The original suits are the four ace cards. The object is to move the stack cards to the original suits, from ace to king, in order. You attempt to uncover the other cards in a stack by moving existing cards in a stack. You can move cards from stack to stack, provided that they also go in order.

But once again, it's not that simple. The cards in the stack can be in order, but ONLY in a varying color scheme, black to red. The same colors can not be next to each other on a stack. If you can't make any more stack moves, then you can use the excess cards left over from the dealing, but only in three's. Sound complicated? It is until you play it.

On the computer, Solitaire is given a lot of fun little options. Cards are automatically dealt, a very large plus. The time spent playing is also logged. Finally, a point scale is put in, based on time, and how many times you're forced to go to the deck of excess cards.

Graphically, Solitaire features several different graphical packs for the cards, but that's about all. The normal clubs, spades, hearts, and diamonds are all here, in full color. There are no sounds to speak of in Solitaire, except for the default Windows system sounds, played when you attempt to exit the game.

Overall, Solitaire is a great way to pass away some boring moments, whether it's at work, home, or your Aunt Edna's funeral. Well, hopefully not your house; that would be rather sad. Solitaire is free on almost any computer that features Windows 3.0 or above, so go ahead and take advantage of it. You won't be sorry.

Community review by sgreenwell (Date unavailable) A bio for this contributor is currently unavailable, but check back soon to see if that changes. If you are the author of this review, you can update your bio from the Settings page.